Verily just presented for the first time at JPMorgan's big health conference. Here's how the CEO of Alphabet's life sciences firm laid out the unusual business to top investors.

Andy Conrad Headshot Andy Conrad Headshot
Verily CEO Andy Conrad.


When Verily CEO Andy Conrad was looking to hire someone to run clinical trials, he turned to Google. 

Typing the question "Who's running the biggest trial" led him to Jessica Mega, now Verily's chief medical officer, who leads the company's 10,000-person Project Baseline study.

Verily is Alphabet's life sciences company, making it a sister firm to Google, and Mega wasn't the only result of Google searching, Conrad told an audience of investors on Monday.

He was speaking in the company's first-ever presentation on the stage at the biggest healthcare conference of the year, the annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. Conrad told the investors he also used a Google search to find its partner Dexcom. Dexcom makes equipment for people with diabetes, and is working with Verily on a continuous glucose monitor.

Verily is involved in efforts such as robotics and addiction treatment

Verily has its hands in projects spanning robotics to blood-sugar-tracking devices to work on addiction treatment. It's struck up relationships with pharmaceutical companies to launch joint ventures such as diabetes-focused Onduo. Often, the work can seem like a collection of random projects. 

"Sometimes if you just read some of the press, it seems like we're doing a bunch of disparate projects, but that's not true," Conrad said. 

Conrad used the presentation as a chance to explain Verily's strategy. He also highlighted a recent hire, former Tesla chief financial officer Deepak Ahuja, who took Tesla public. Ahuja is now Verily's CFO.

He laid out Verily's three businesses: care solutions, like its work managing diabetes via Onduo; research solutions, in which Verily partners with hospitals and pharmaceutical organizations in how they conduct clinical trials; and innovation solutions, which is meant to fill in gaps found through the first two businesses.

Verily is focused on collecting and organizing data, then putting it to use

Through those businesses, Verily works to collect data, organize it, and use that to drive changes in behavior to help make people healthier. 

In the presentation, Conrad outlined data on how Onduo's working that was published in the Journal of Diabetes Science and Technology in December. Verily was able to show that a virtual program incorporating blood sugar readings, taking pictures of food, and lifestyle monitoring, is helping people living with type 2 diabetes. 

Verily spun out of Google's Google X division as part of the creation of Alphabet in 2015.  The company has taken in $1.8 billion in outside investments. In 2019, it raised a $1 billion round from Silver Lake. And in 2017, the company raised $800 million from Singaporean investment firm Temasek. 

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"They teach us how to behave like a business, not like a hobby," Conrad said. "They're mean and sometimes kind, but they're certainly thoughtful about an investment at that scale." 

Read more: A top hospital consultant just laid out what Google could do in healthcare over the next 5 years, from creating a medical-records system to helping form a more functional health system

Conrad finished the presentation discussing the company's approach to partnerships. Verily set up its relationships to hit certain milestones, through joint ventures, and by directly monetizing the products that come out of the partnership. 

"We are never doing any work for any of those partners in a fee for service basis," Conrad said. "We're never doing any of it just contractually." 

So far, the company has 32 partnerships, up from three the year it officially spun out. 

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